Monday, July 14, 2008

Access: blog post inspires blog post!

My post of yesterday, about my colour blindness, was inspired by Snoskred's great post on Aussie Bloggers about people telling the truth, and what good blogs should include (and avoid). In turn, my blog post has inspired Craig Thomler's latest post on eGov au.

Craig asks, "Do government communications discriminate against - or for - the visually impaired?" He continues, "Despite the requirement for government in Australia to ensure our websites are accessible, I worry both that we do not do enough, and that we do too much, in this area."

I added a comment to my post, clarifying that my Curriculum Directorate colleague (at Ryde State Office of the NSW Department of Education & Training), mentioned in the post, did spread the word about my "condition" - with my permission, of course - and I became an unofficial colour evaluation guinea pig for several Units' webpage revamps for the Departmental website while I was there.

Mind you, while I was able to help them with specifications to aid my red/green colour blindness, there are other types. Where does all the beta testing end? ;) I know we tried to address numerous aspects of accessibility for the "Scan" and School Libraries web pages while I was there, and our tweaking of the book rap blogs and wikis have been ongoing. But it seems there's always so much more you can do to make a site more accessible and equitable.

That web composers are open to suggestions (and complaints) from people trying to use their site, is of paramount importance. For example, as pretty as Flash animations may be, to use only such a visual on the front page of a site can mean that people using old browsers or computers can't even progress to the page with contact details to lodge a complaint! (I've been there before!)

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About me

Otherwise known as "Therin of Andor", Ian McLean has had an active association with "Star Trek" and science fiction media fandom in Australia since 1980. Before then he was an avid fan of the "Batman" TV series (60s) and the Australian TV classic, "Number 96" (70s).